Hello and welcome to the deception tips podcast where you will learn amazing cues to detect deceit that will help you read people like never before, I’m your host Spencer Coffman, let’s get started.

Welcome to episode 52 of the deception tips podcast. Here we are again another day where you are going to learn more about detecting deception and how to read people, so you’ll know whether or not they are lying to you. 

This is going to be excellent for use with your kids, your spouse, and hopefully, your spouse is not lying to you, but everybody is human, and we all lie.

Statistics have shown that we can lie two to three times in 10 minutes of conversation, the average person can tell a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty lies per day, an average of about 200 lies a day. This doesn’t always mean that these lies are direct and malicious, they could be simple eyes such as, “How are you doing today?” “Oh, I’m good.”

Well, you’re not good because yesterday your grandmother got sick and now, she’s in the hospital so you’re not good, certain things like that. “How do you like my new shirt?” “Oh, it sucks,” but really you say, “Oh, that’s lovely”, no, not lovely, that’s a lie. Those lies are arguably a necessary part of society, they’re social and polite lies.

If you went around all over telling people that their haircut was terrible, that the shirt is ugly, that they don’t know what they’re doing, that that was stupid or what a dumb thing to say, then you would really not be a friendly person, you would seem like a jerk. A lot of people would really not like you and you would hurt a lot of feelings out there. That’s not what you want to accomplish in life, you don’t want to be that person, that person is not you.

Therefore, you use these things to determine whether or not someone else is lying so that you can know the truth, and then it’s up to you whether or not that truth is worth knowing. You need to have a little bit of discernment, you need to be compassionate and you need to care about other people. That is the whole point of this, it is about caring for others and caring for yourself that you do not want to be taken advantage of.

Last time, we talked about the stress and tension involved in telling a lie, we touched on all of the different past episodes where stress and tension could have been displayed. We talked about a very prominent behavior of wringing the hands when someone is a little bit stressed or when they’re tense. It could not always mean they are telling a lie, it could happen at any time.

It could happen if they’re nervous, it could happen if they’re scared, it could be if they’re lying because as we’ve said when people tell a lie, there is a lot of stress and tension in telling a lie. Remember the lie detector tests, those polygraph machines, that’s what they measure, they measure your neurological signs and biofeedback of how much stress and how much tension you’re exhibiting.

How your neurotransmitters are firing, your heart rate, your sweat glands, all of that stuff. They measure that and they determine if the machine reads your normal stress levels and then there’s a spike on that stress level, that spike must mean the person is lying. These have been proven as not super effective, even though they are still used widely as the industry standard, they are not as effective as a human being who can accurately read this deception.

In addition, there are other machines out there that monitor your retina, so it’s like your eyes, your people dilations, everything like that. They put pads under your armpits, they put things on your fingers, on your temples, they measure all these different signs, more of a biofeedback machine, those are more reliable. The problem is they’re just way more expensive.

With a lie detector test, because the polygraph only measures the stress and tension, they’re not super reliable. Remember, pathological liars or people who are really good at lying, may not exhibit that stress and tension when they tell a lie. Therefore, can a polygraph work for them? 

Absolutely not. In addition, if people are normally stressed or if they’re stressed or tense about something else and they talk about it, you’re going to see a spike on that machine, but it may not mean they’re being deceptive.

So, there’s a lot of controversy over the polygraph machine and whether or not it is super effective. However, industry-standard still says it is, that something to just be aware of, human beings can be more effective if they learn how to read people and detect deception which I hope this podcast will help you do.

So, last time, remember wringing of the hands, stress, tension, etc. Today, we are going to talk about another behavior very similar to that behavior, it is about massaging the hands. It’s not necessarily wringing them, it is more of the massage side of it, but it is still very similar.

Here it is, deception tip number 52. Liars may sometimes massage the fleshy part of the hand beneath the thumb with the thumb and index finger of the opposite hand. Here it is again, liars may sometimes massage the fleshy part of the hand beneath the thumb with the thumb and index finger of the opposite hand.

Now, that could sound a little confusing, beneath the thumb, with the thumb, whatever, you may be like, “What’s going on here?” I’m going to break it down for you so it’s very simple and it’s really easy to understand. So, wringing the hands, remember how people fold their hands together so their knuckles are interlocked, their fingers are interlocked, and they may put pressure and squeeze with one hand than the other.

They may also clasp them like you’re going to clap, and the palms are on top of each other, fingers are between the thumb and fingers of the other hand, so they’re overlapped. This behavior is similar to that whereas they have one hand open. So, if you take, let’s say your left hand and open it up, put your fingers together but it’s like a karate chop hand, take the other hand and do the same thing.

So, you have two hands that look like they’re in mittens then take one of them and touch your thumbs together, but not at the tip of your thumbs. Put them together in that little crevice like when you were a kid and they said hold your hands up and whichever one makes an L, that’s your left.

Take that part, the crease of the L, that corner of the L, and put it next to the corner of the other L, that is the fleshy part of your hand. If you take your thumb and on top of one hand, you massage that corner of the L, that’s the fleshy part, that’s what we’re talking about.

So, it’s when someone is massaging that L corner in their hand, the fleshy part of their hand, that is what this sign is. What do we talk about with massage? It is a pacification gesture, they’re pacifying away that stress and tension, they’re releasing that stress and tension. We’re going to talk a lot more about how this helps and how massaging will release that coming up right after this.

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Here we are, welcome back to deception tip number 52, we’re talking about how stress and tension are prevalent in lies and how you can massage your hand to reduce that stress and tension. 

Not so much how you can do it, but how liars or people who lie will do it when they are lying to help massage away that stress and tension. We just went over how it looks, what it looks like, hopefully, you’ve got a good picture in your mind.

I encourage you to try it out on yourself and you’ll notice, wow, that feels good. As I’m talking to you right now, I’m sitting here massaging the fleshy parts of both my hands because it’s a nice feeling. Anytime you massage something it feels good, it’s released, you’re working your muscles, you are giving your muscles something that they don’t get on a regular basis.

It’s like a treat, you’re making them say ahh, that’s something where you are working them out and you’re getting all that tissue going in the same direction again. You’re working out the kinks, the knots and everything will be aligned properly, so you’re working out that stress and tension.

If you’ve ever had a full body massage or the Swedish massages or whatever they call them then you know that by the time you’re done your body feels a little bit sore, but you’re also rejuvenated. They tell you to drink a lot of water because we’ve released a lot of the toxins that were trapped in your muscle tissue back into your bloodstream, so you need to drink the water to flush all of them out.

Therefore, massaging feels good because you’re getting rid of all that gunk, all that garbage inside your body. So, when people are under some stress and tension in telling a lie or even when they’re talking with other people or negotiating, you may see this behavior. So, don’t immediately believe that oh, look at that, that person is massaging the fleshy part of their hand, they must be telling a lie.

No, it doesn’t always mean they’re lying, it’s just like every single one of these behaviors and I must say this in every single episode, you hear it every week, you have to look for patterns and clusters of behavior. If you’re just relying on one sign of deception, then you’re going to be wrong. You may be right in that instance but overall, if you continue to do that, you’re not going to end up on top.

You’re going to end up in a world of hurt because you’re going to mess up somewhere and it’s going to be a big mess up. It’s not going to be the little one that you mess up on, it’s going to be one that is significant and you’re going to have misread the situation and it could be catastrophic, it could be life-altering.

Therefore, rely on patterns and clusters of behavior and remember that these signs of deception are not always signs of deception. When someone massages their hand maybe their hand is sore, maybe they were just writing a letter and they just wrote 10,000 words with a pencil and their thumb is sore and they massage it out. Maybe they were using a screwdriver because they didn’t have a drill and they had to go into some solid oak, your hand would be pretty sore after that.

So, keep in mind that there could be a lot of reasons. Obviously, those are two dumb reasons that you may not see every day because most people have a computer and most people have a drill but what if they don’t? What if they were texting or playing video games on their phone and they needed to use their thumb and tap a hundred thousand times or something?

The point is, anything is possible, and you need to keep in mind that something you see may not always mean one thing, everything has multiple meanings. That’s why you need to look for the pattern and the cluster of behavior because if you see one then you see another, and you see another. Yes, each one of those three could have multiple meanings, however, they all have one potential meaning in common and that’s deception.

So, if you see all of them, well, let’s see, they all have one thing in common. It’s like those circles, those Venn diagrams when three of them overlap that point in the middle, they’re all separate but they all overlap right there in the middle, it must be deception, so keep that in mind as well. Remember that anytime people massage any part of their body it is a release of stress and tension.

We’ve also called this a pacification gesture they’re pacifying away the stress and tension. Typically, though, pacification gestures are providing a means of something else, so it’s pacifying the desire. Remember the definition, what is the thing you give a baby? It’s called a pacifier, so they want to drink milk, they want to have a bottle or whatever and you give them the pacifier to give them the impression that that’s what they’re doing.

It’s like a pretend, it’s a fake, it’s phony, it’s pacifying that desire. People who smoke want to smoke a cigarette but if you give them a toothpick and they have the toothpick in their mouth, they’re okay most of the time. Why? It is because they’re pacifying the desire to have something in their mouth at all times, that’s a pacification gesture, something that is accomplishing the purpose of something else.

So, massaging away tension, it’s somewhat of a pacification gesture but not entirely because what is it taking the place off? Nothing really, it’s just working out, it’s getting rid of the stress and tension, it’s not pacifying the desire to get rid of it. You may see this a lot in anger, if someone is angry, they may start to wring their hands or tightly clasp them or massage that away, that is an angry gesture.

They want to hit something, they want to do some harm, but they can’t, so they wring their hands and tightly clasp them, that is a pacification. In addition, we’re going to continue on with anger a little bit, a little sigh deviation, give you a little bit more knowledge. 

People who self-harm, may cut themselves or they may really squeeze their hands or their arms or something and give them marks, cause themselves pain, they want to do something worse.

They want to either hurt somebody else or they want to really hurt themselves, they have so much pain inside them they need to get it out, they harm themselves to release that. It’s pacifying that desire, that stronger desire but it only gives temporary satisfaction, keep that in mind. Just like drugs, some people want drugs to do something, they want to feel this feeling, so they get a drug to get them to feel that way.

Then they realize that they’re worse off than before because they no longer feel that way, they feel worse when the high comes down. So, a little bit of segue right there but keep in mind that a lot of things have multiple meanings. 

It is your job, your desire, your ambition, your goal, your duty to figure out what those meanings are. Now that you know all of these different signs you can use them to help yourself and help other people.

I want to thank you for listening to the deception tips podcast. Hopefully, you’re going to share it with your friends, subscribe to the feed, check out the deception tips videos, the blog, and the books I have available and as always, tune in next week for a new deception tip.

Hey guys, my name is Spencer Coffman, thank you for watching the deception tips videos, they’re all about teaching you how to read people and detect deception so that you will be able to tell if someone is lying to you. Today, we’ve got a cool tip that piggybacks on last week’s tip, so if you haven’t seen that video, check out the card up here, click on it, watch that video, check out whatever it may be.

If it’s a podcast or the book or whatever, get familiar with last week’s episode because this one is very similar. This is a gesture that you’re going to see on someone’s hands, it’s a stress or tension-relieving gesture. It’s also known as a pacification gesture because they are pacifying that stress and tension and pacification gestures, just as a little recap, they are gestures that are done to make someone feel a little bit better.

So, it’s something that feels good because not only is it releasing the stress or tension but it’s also something that relaxes the body or makes it feel a little bit more comfortable. It’s also called a comforting gesture, maybe like folding the arms, which is giving someone a hug, that’s way back in deception tip number one, we’ve referenced that a lot throughout these tips.

In addition, you may see that happen on the legs like when they cross their legs or lock those ankles, like in deception tip number 22. So, those gestures are done as a comforting gesture or a self-pleasing, it says pacification gesture, they’re pacifying that stress or tension or that desire to flee or the desire to do something else.

So, here it is, this is deception tip number 52. Liars may sometimes massage the fleshy part of the hand beneath the thumb with the thumb and index finger of the opposite hand. So, this tip was a little bit confusing with a lot of the same words, they’re massaging the fleshy part of one hand with the thumb and index finger of another hand. What does that look like?

Well, it’s very simple, here’s one hand right here, this is the fleshy part beneath the thumb, in between the thumb and index finger, it’s this part right here where a web would be in your hand. So, they’re going to take the thumb and index finger of one hand and massage that hand. It’s not going to look like this exaggerator where they’re like, oh my goodness, I better massage my hand.

No, it’s going to be very subtle, like in deception tip number 51 when we talked about wringing the hands, you’re going to see it in conjunction with that behavior. So, you may see them wringing their hands then all of a sudden, it may suddenly transfer to massaging the thumb and index finger with the one hand, so you can see how it’s wringing the hands now I’m massaging the other hand.

There’s a very, very slight movement, it’s very subtle and if it’s this way it’d be like this or maybe they have the hands this way and it’s this direction. So, you may see them massaging that fleshy area of the hand with the thumb and index finger of the other hand and again, it’s very subtle, they could have their hands folded on their desk and just be working this.

We said that this is a pacification gesture or it’s a comforting gesture, it’s done to make them feel good. Why does it feel good? Well, anytime you get a massage, chances are it feels good. Yes, of course, when the person is wringing out that knot in the back of your neck or your muscles are very sore, you may have a little bit of tension there or it may be tender, or it may hurt a little bit.

Overall, when you get a massage it feels pretty good, so when someone is massaging that part of their hand it feels good, same with wringing the hands they’re massaging their hands. Go ahead and try that one time, just massage that area of your hand and you’ll know that it feels a little bit good because you’re giving that muscle a little bit of relaxation in that area.

That is what I mean by it’s a comforting gesture or it’s a stress or tension releasing gesture because it is releasing that stress and tension and giving a little bit of feeling of pleasure or satisfaction in that area of the body which is then putting their mind at a little bit more ease.

So, if this is your first time watching these videos, I’d love to have you subscribe to the channel on YouTube, feel free to comment with any questions you may have as well. Also, if you’d like more information, we have books, blog posts, and podcasts all available on spencercoffman.com that are a hundred percent dedicated to teaching you exactly what every body is saying.

Until next time.